Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional — Question 27

To reduce storage and compute costs, the data engineering team has been tasked with curating a series of aggregate tables leveraged by business intelligence dashboards, customer-facing applications, production machine learning models, and ad hoc analytical queries.
The data engineering team has been made aware of new requirements from a customer-facing application, which is the only downstream workload they manage entirely. As a result, an aggregate table used by numerous teams across the organization will need to have a number of fields renamed, and additional fields will also be added.
Which of the solutions addresses the situation while minimally interrupting other teams in the organization without increasing the number of tables that need to be managed?

Answer options

• A. Send all users notice that the schema for the table will be changing; include in the communication the logic necessary to revert the new table schema to match historic queries.
• B. Configure a new table with all the requisite fields and new names and use this as the source for the customer-facing application; create a view that maintains the original data schema and table name by aliasing select fields from the new table.
• C. Create a new table with the required schema and new fields and use Delta Lake's deep clone functionality to sync up changes committed to one table to the corresponding table.
• D. Replace the current table definition with a logical view defined with the query logic currently writing the aggregate table; create a new table to power the customer-facing application.
• E. Add a table comment warning all users that the table schema and field names will be changing on a given date; overwrite the table in place to the specifications of the customer-facing application.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Option B is correct because it allows the data engineering team to create a new table for the customer-facing application while preserving the original table's schema through a view, thus minimizing disruption to other teams. Option A does not prevent other teams from being impacted by the changes, while option C involves managing additional tables, which contradicts the requirement. Option D also adds complexity by replacing the current definition, and option E directly overwrites the existing table, which would disrupt other teams relying on the current schema.